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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Organization Hell | How do you organize your records? Or perhaps I should be asking; DO you organize your records? Certainly there are obvious benefits to taking on such a feat. Knowing exactly where something is so you can go to it on a moment's notice is probably pretty helpful. Keeping multiple records by the same artist in the same spot also seems like a good idea. You can even break it down by genre, keeping all your classic rock records on one shelf, jazz records on another, funk and soul somewhere else...

I've tried them all. At one point I even tried keeping a spreadsheet inventory of every record I collected. It felt good to be so organized, everything was in its right place. But then after a while, for no reason in particular, I started getting sloppy.

When the inspiration to make a new mixtape would hit, I'd start making stacks of records that I thought in my mind would go well together. Then when I choose the first song, I hit record on my computer and don't stop spinning until it's finished. I don't choose the next song until the song before it has started to play. Then when I'm finished recording a track from a record, it goes back into a random stack.

After a while these stacks of records don't get put back in their respective places on the record shelves. Suddenly stacks of records end up all over my living room, on top of windowsills, radiators, and other audio equipment. Yet somehow in all the clutter, I know exactly where everything is. In fact, I can find any given record in a random stack much quicker than I ever could digging through my "organized" record shelves. Why is that? I have no idea.

So I'm asking you, dear reader– How do YOU organize your records? Or do you even care?—Brendan Polmer